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"If, in fact, hybrids get us back to electric vehicles, and that's where we ultimately want to get back to, maybe the hybrid enthusiasm is a blessing," he said.
http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_2981315
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050830/305436.html?.v=1
Honda has sold 100,000 vehicles in North America. No idea about their worldwide sales.
Hybrids are climbing up.
August-2005 is the highest for Hybrid Sales.
Prius - 9,850
Civic - 4,146
Highlander - 2,925
RX400h - 2,607
Accord - 2,336
Escape - 1,363
Insight - 80
Total - 23,307
Its also the Highest for Civic, Highlander.
August-2004 was roughly around 7,000 units, so it has tripled in a year.
Great. Looks like Honda must have sold all Insights in their inventory.
At the 2003 Detroit Motor Show.
G. Richard Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors, boasted the
company would be marketing hybrid-electric vehicles from the
year-end and would sell a million of them in 2007. But the years
passed without a single full-scale hybrid-electric vehicle rolling
off a GM assembly line. Meanwhile Japanese automakers steadily
gained a foothold in the hybrid-electric vehicle market.
And by the way - welcome to the Forums!
http://www.newsdemocrat.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=120341
"As the price of gas has risen, manufacturers have worked to lower the price of hybrids. The average price of a hybrid vehicle in 1999 was around $89,000. Toyota said its 2005 Prius, a roomy four-door coupe, gets about 60 miles per gallon. The price tag on this new vehicle is around $20,000, which is competitive with most new vehicles."
I noticed something interesting in that article about the pumps and how they cant display gas prices above $2.999. isn't that a weird number? why isn't it $9.999? Let me say some of the gas stations where I live have no problems displaying prices over $2.999.
http://www.autoextremist.com/research/hand.shtml#plug-in
discussions where they belong.
With gas prices in the county soaring well over $3 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, on top of record-breaking prices during the summer, hybrid and other fuel-efficient vehicles are in greater demand than ever before, according to local car dealers.
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050907/ZNYT01/509070375/1004/LO- CAL
"TOKYO, Sept. 5 - With Hurricane Katrina pushing American gas prices above $3 a gallon at the pump, Toyota Motor may find itself in the right place at the right time, with a new, half-mile assembly line capable of producing gasoline-electric hybrid Prius cars at the rate of one a minute.
The line, in a factory in Toyota City, is part of a strategy by Japan's largest company to expand hybrids from a niche in the marketplace (just 5 percent of its American sales now) to mainstream (25 percent of its sales by 2010)."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/business/worldbusiness/07hybrid.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=11- 26105246-uyVkdWrgafkQLpxHy9MQpg
Any comments or government links that refute this?
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/09/fuji_heavys_tur.html#more
An electrical Subaru? What is Subaru's competitive advantage over Toyota? It is owned by Fuji a battery manufacturer. That in itself may give Subaru a pretty good advantage! As Toyota keeps on dragging their feet about plug-ins, Subaru can give Toyota a knock out punch with high volume production of plug-in or electrical vehicles! I am confident there will be great demand for such vehicles!
http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0509/03/autos-302244.htm
BMW-Daimler Chryselr- GM hybrids? I myself would never buy a hybrid BMW. BMW handling should never be compromised by the extra weight of a hybrid system, but if the market demands it, so be it!!
I think Subaru's hybrid endeavors will somehow flow into GM products! They are a bit too close to go their seperate ways!(GM owns a portion of Subaru)
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2005-09-07-bmw-hybrid_x.htm
Owning my BMW 3 series for seven years has been problem free for me! A Subie or a BMW? I would buy a BMW again any day!!!. No sedan can handle like a Bimmer, none!
"SHANGHAI, Sept 8 - Volkswagen will start making hybrid cars by 2008 with its main Chinese partner and may kick off large-scale production of the energy-efficient vehicles by 2010, the Chinese company said on Thursday."
http://tinyurl.com/787yf
Plug in is a great idea; it has already been tried with the GM EV-1. But the idea of converting a stock Prius to electric only via switch (or some other way) to allow the owner to go on short shopping trips, etc. , has problems.
It is not a matter of geopolitics, it is a matter of practicality. To use only the batteries requires going deeper into the discharge cycle of the batteries, which is what causes NiMh batteries to fail. The Toyota and Honda engineers keep their batteries between 20% and 80% of capacity for this reason. One would have to either increase the amount of batteries or risk losing those batteries prematurely.
The current Prius can go a couple of miles on electricity (at slow speeds) before the ICE kicks in. That distance is therefore the longest that is considered safe (to ensure long-term reliability) by the engineers at Toyota.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/09/business/wbauto.php
Natural gas is extensively used on the west coast. Like it or not, the upcoming personal transportation technologies that will require copious amounts of electricity*, will virtually mandate new power plant construction. Whether they'll be fueld by fossil resources (regardless of national origin) or nuclear reaction is up for grabs, but there is no possibility of sufficient hydroelectric production expansion to meet anticipated needs left in this country.
*hydrogen fueled vehicles in particular - though hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, on earth it's locked in water and takes electricity to extract it.
My understanding is that there is a controller that determines how much electric vs. gas to use. I would like the option of adjusting that and plugging in my car to replenish the batteries.
Another thought, the car should be able to “learn” my driving patterns and optimize the amount of battery/gas usage. Driving during a different time of day or with a different speed/power profile would alert the system to use the battery more conservatively. That way, if I take the car on a trip over the weekend, I wouldn’t deplete the batteries in the first 40 miles. That would be pretty cool if you ask me!
-murray
The current crop of hybrids are only on the second or third iteration and have had little competition and relatively small sales volumes. That will change.
Unless other technologies come to the forefront, especially diesel with low sulfur.
Here is an article from the International Herald Tribune.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/09/business/wbauto.php
Diesel does absolutely nothing to address stop & slow traffic conditions, which millions of people have to deal with on their daily commute. The "full" hybrid design does. In fact, it thrives under those conditions, since it can propel the vehicle exclusively using electricity. Some even allow you to run the A/C using only electricity too.
That is a rather significant shortcoming of diesel, one that will prevent it from competing well.
JOHN
The ESX3's mild hybrid electric (or "mybrid") powertrain combines a clean diesel engine, electric motor, and lithium-ion battery to achieve 72 miles per gallon
http://www.allpar.com/model/intrepid-esx3.html
Now there's a piece of logic - I think the same reasoning was used by other armchair experts about faster-than-sound level flight before Chuck Yeager climbed into the Bell X-1 hung from a B-29 in the early '50s and made history.
Several diesel/hybrids have been shown at the auto shows. Mercury & Mercedes are two of them.
"As the world's first PZEV capable diesel, the Mercury Meta One concept shows that advanced technologies that we're developing promise the potential to deliver diesels that can be as clean as the cleanest gasoline engines," said Schmidt. "The torque of this engine, when combined with the modular hybrid-electric transmission, also provides excellent driving performance."
http://www.canadiandriver.com/news/05detroit/041228-2.htm
Powerful diesel/electric hybrid drive system underlines innovative concept. State-of-the-art V8 diesel engine with 184 kW/250 hp from the S-Class and an electric motor (50 kW) deliver a total of 234 kW of power and 860 Nm of torque
Acceleration of a sports car: 0 to 100 km/h in just 6.6 seconds; top speed electronically limited to 250 km/h
http://www.daimlerchrysler.com/dccom/0,,0-5-7154-1-160159-1-0-0-160157-0-0-135-7145-0-0-0-- 0-0-0-0,00.html
Prime target consumer on these hybrid pickups are contractors who need the 110 volt outlets, so they don't have to carry a generator.